Story Behind the Story

Today’s post is written by Lita Kurth. We published her poem “Layers” in our Spring 2017 issue.  In 1996, the year she won the Nobel Prize, I found Wislawa Szymborska’s “Some Like Poetry” on the Xerox machine at the university where I worked. Captivated, I promptly used it in my Composition classes to illustrate how the…

Today’s post is written by Laura McCullough. We published her poem “Across Which the World” in our Fall 2016 issue.  It’s hard to discuss my own work. I think if I could say what I needed to say in another form, I would. A poem is what I write because I can’t say something any other…

Today’s post is written by Michael Overa. We published his short story “Shepherding” in our Fall 2016 issue. Memory has always struck me as a rather tenuous thing. Even the healthiest minds muddle and jumble and transpose memories. Inevitably, I struggle with the idea of memory primarily because of my own love-hate relationship with it. I’ve no…

Today’s post is written by Mary Leonard. We published her flash fiction “Love Letters” in our Fall 2016 issue.  Really, “Love Letters” is based on true experiences: the toilet would not flush, a mouse would visit every night, the air conditioning could not be regulated. I never did meet any of the employees of the Physical Plant but…

Today’s post is written by Lynn Otto. We published her poems “Marcescence” and “And After” in our Fall 2016 issue. When my friend Dave read someone’s claim that it’s impossible to write any more good poems about the moon, he wrote a poem about the moon. Someone has probably said something similar about trees. But I…

Today’s post is written by Monet Thomas. We published her creative nonfiction piece “The Unfaithful Triptych” in our Fall 2016 issue.  “The Unfaithful Triptych” is one of several pieces I’ve written styled after a triptych or three pieces of art, usually paintings or photography, hung beside each other and meant to be appreciated together. It was during…

Today’s post is written by Anthony J. Mohr. His essay “Super Summer Spectacular” appears in our Spring 2016 issue. For several years I’d been trying unsuccessfully to build an essay based on the wild contests that AM radio disc jockeys sponsored in Los Angeles between 1959 and 1970. I had so much to say, or so I thought.…

Today’s post is written by Melissa Ballard. Her essay “Perfect Child” appears in our Spring 2016 issue.  In 2011, I drafted a poem about the “I choose ‘zis” scene in “Perfect Child.” But my poems are prose with random line breaks, so I abandoned that effort. During the summer of 2012, I took a class with…

Today’s post is written by James Valvis. We published his short story “Big Alabama and the Danforth Avenue Gang” in our Spring 2016 issue. Charles Bukowski was in his declining years when, after years of snubbing him, they chose one of his poems for Best American Poetry. When they finally took that poem, they asked…